In my
original review of El-P and Killer Mike's Run the Jewels
collaboration I wrote that the rap bffs succeeded in "recasting rap
threats as an art-form." While that was an accurate description of their
brilliant, mechanical, stream-of-consciousness onslaught, I wish I hadn't used
the phrase. Now I have nothing to say about "Blockbuster Night Part
1," the first sampling of RTJ2. What the hell looms above an
"art-form?" How can you get larger than life with your chest-puffing?
If you're Killer Mike, you get
there by bidding listeners "top of the morning, my fist to your face is
f***ing Folgers," as sirens wail like a child who has had their favorite
toy taken away. People tend to sit up like a board when you suggest that
"the fellows at the top are likely rapists," as El-P does. Especially
when that kind of hierarchical takedown is coupled with arrhythmic drums and
broken police scanner static. This isn't some political crackpot convention
though, it's a thoroughly reworked routine where RTJ "disappear in the
smoke like we're f***ing magicians." "Blockbuster Night Part 1 is an
orchestrated "macabre massacre." It's bold enough to tell Satan
"be patient," but relaxed enough to burn through a pound of weed. As
Killer Mike puts it, "it's murder, mayhem, melodic music."
Like the original Run the Jewels, RTJ2 will be available for free download and physical copies will be outOctober 28 through Mass Appeal. RTJ also has an Adult Swim single dropping on September 15. It's going to be a brutal couple of months.
Any "honeymoon" the classic lineup of Guided by Voices had after their 2010 reunion is officially over, as now ex-drummer Kevin Fennell is feuding with frontman Robert Pollard. Last week after Fennell put up his drum-kit on Ebay for auction, Pollard's management responded with the following statement, "For the record, the band Guided By Voices has nothing to do with the
sale of Kevin Fennell's drums. He is acting on his own and is no longer
in the band."
In a correspondence between the two shared on a now removed Facebook page for the auction, Fennell maintains he quit his drumming gig for GBV; Pollard asserts he was "already fired". Pollard asserts "you have made a fool of yourself by your asking price... and most people
would like to know who the f*** you think you are and who you think
Guided By Voices is that you can warrant that kind of asking price for
your f***ing drums." Pollard then twists the knife in further, going on to say "the so-called f***ing Classic line-up was a laugh to begin with. You're an amateur, you play too fast."
English Little League, the fourth release by the band since reuniting dropped in April of this year, and even without the feud figured to possibly be the last GBV release as Pollard hinted in July, "people at festivals don't want to hear a new album they want to hear the greatest hits." With all this current acrimony, enjoy a cut from their calmer "classic period", 1996's "Official Ironmen Rally Song".
Cut Copy debut new track
Tuesday on the blog, Cut Copy's new track "We Are Explorers" made an appearance and now they're back with another offering, the jaunty "Take Me Higher" whose opening wouldn't be out of place on an R.E.M. record where Stipe and company took a turn towards the dancefloor. Like "We Are Explorers", lead-singer Dan Whitford retains a quizzical tone in his voice as a pulsating beat glossing over a whistle takes hold.
Cut Copy's fourth LP Free Your Mind drops on November 1 through Modular.
Run the Jewels release video for "Get It"
Run the Jewels, the collaborative effort between kindred spirits El-P and Killer Mike remains one of my favorite records of any genre in 2013 and now the duo has released a video for the apocalyptic lurch of "Get It". The visuals keep up the chest-puffing approach of the song, showing El dangling gold chains and Mike smoking a blunt intermingled with cuts of the two out on tour; bringing their own brand of hellfire to locales all over the map. As their tour draws to a close, it's the perfect summation of an incredible year. A victory lap captured on screen. If you somehow have avoided the album, Run the Jewels can be purchased through Fool's Gold.
"This is R.A.P.,"
Killer Mike warned on his blazing 2012 record R.A.P. Music. But no
mission statement no matter how loud or bellowing could've prepared anyone for
this. On Run the Jewels, Mike and new-found bff El-P (who produced all
of R.A.P. Music) don't just beat the rap game into submission; they
douse it in lighter fluid, strike a match, and walk off laughing. If
"protect your neck" could be bandied about as a warning statement in
2013, it should appear scrawled across the front of this record in the largest
font conceivable.
If you walked into this thing
expecting some lengthy treatise on police states or crumbling economies tinged
with a healthy dose of introspection or introversion, you've set foot in the
wrong house and should turn back immediately. If Killer Mike and El-P
accomplish anything on this album, it's recasting rap threats as an art-form.
Mike isn't just 80s Tyson on the lurking production of "Job WellDone," he resorts to 90s Tyson techniques and promises that "if I'm
losing take a bite out." El-P makes stream-of-consciousness
"s**t-talking" oddly possible in his verse, painting scenes of Yetis
walking out of the woods to "cop the album," and emperors performing
an about-face when they hear the duo's tunes, "admitting they are
nudists."
But not every moment on the
album is "real bad guy s**t," hell-bent on destruction. "No
Come Down" finds Mike chowing down on a shroom or two before traveling to
Ancient Egypt to make love, and checking out The Moon for good measure. The
dance-floor seizure number "36 Chain" lets El-P ”spit grams at
zombies," and indulge his inner Michael Flatley. The propulsive drum beat
of "Banana Clipper" proves a jump-rope for the two to perform their
own rap double-dutch, trading
off lines and verses like Siamese cyborgs programmed to rock a microphone. When
raps are delivered this tightly-wound and fully-formed, it's impossible to do
anything as a fan but stand up and cheer. Big Boi’s verse (which has been
unfairly described by almost everyone out there as "an afterthought) is
Daddy Fat Sacks at his biggest and baldest, accusing anyone who doesn't get it
of being "simply simple minded simple Simons." Much of this album
plays out as a blend of Southern-fried rap and nightmarish synths, like ATliens
or Aquemini repurposed for the robot apocalypse, so what better guest to
have than one half of the OutKast?
More
than one outlet
has drawn inevitable comparisons between this album and Kanye's eye-brow
raising Yeezus, with Sobhi Youssef of Sputnikmusic hilariously bemoaning
"when Kanye West decides it's f***ing brilliant to combine industrial and
electronic influences with hip-hop, suddenly the music we've already been
hearing since 1997's Funcrusher Plus is bukkake-worthy." But
Youssef should honestly know better. Pure, unadulterated rap will never
outmaneuver the type of juggernauts Kanye drops every time out now, no matter who’s
behind the boards. Ye's earworms bury their way into brain, Mike and El-P's
ravage every last lobe until you drop dead from an auditory overload. One isn't
better than the other; you're just ensured survival when you take the path of
the former. For all the larger-than-life
chest-puffing and sci-fi braggadocio, the pair still manages to deliver
sincerity. Mike cops to being "stuck in a time capsule, when rap was
actually factual," on "Get It" letting us all know why he's so
doggedly committed to hip-hop. Further buried in the song, Mike identifies him
and "Jamie" as the "new Avengers, here to you all your false
idols are just pretenders, they're corporation slaves indentured to all the
lenders, so even if you got seven figures you're still a n***a,"
distilling the entire modern struggle into one barbed verse. "A F***ingChristmas Miracle" blends sleigh bells with thudding drums to produce a
rap Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, but El and Mike melt the icy
synths with personal narratives of pops becoming "vagrants," steel
and cement twisting into "nature," and eulogize fallen friends
"Pimp C & Camu Tao." Behind every jack-move, there's still a
stick-up kid with a story to tell, and on Run the Jewels, El-P &
Killer Mike tell the tale more vividly and with more fury than anything
anyone's released all-year.
Run The Jewels is out now on Fool’s Gold; download it for free here.
